ZigConway Johan Rimez - 2024
This is an open source project featuring:
- ZIG programming language (www.ziglang.org)
- SDL2 - Simple DirectMedia Layer (www.libsdl.org)
This program is intended to demonstrate graphics programming for a simple but fully working coding example using ZIG & SDL. Moreover, this project is intended to be as flexible as possible towards:
- Coding and compiling in and for WindowsOS & VS Code
- Coding and compiling in and for Linux & VS Codium
- Coding and compiling in Windows for Linux as target
The original idea for the program came from this coding tutorial:
Patt Vira - "Game of Life CLock" https://www.pattvira.com/coding-tutorials/v/game-of-life-clock
USAGE:
quits the application
CODING:
In order for VS Code/Codium to run smoothly with the Zig Language Server (ZLS) in both Windows and Linux, the C-library and the SDL-library header files are first exported to a common import file "cImport.zig" (important: UTF-8) as a preparatory step (you may want to locate the header files first and adapt the below commands first). I consider this file to be put in the source directory.
target specific: (Windows) zig translate-c cImportWin.h -lc > cImport.zig (Linux) zig translate-c cImportLinux.h -lc -target x86_64-linux-gnu -I/usr/include -I/usr/include/x86_64-linux-gnu > cImport.zig
COMPILING:
The build.zig build file is configured for these scenarios:
- Building in windows for windows
- Building in windows for linux (.a & .so libraries need to be provided in the root project directory)
- Building in linux for linux
VS CODE:
the json-build and launch tasks are configured for windows.
RUNNING:
Windows users need to put the path to the SDL2.dll SDL2_image.dll libraries into their PATH or have them in the same folder as the executable.
REMARK:
I used the "Software Renderer" to interact with the Surfaces to easily implement the XOR - blending. I know it's a strech on CPU usage, but I simply can't find any decent equivalent with the hardware accelerated renderer (acting on Textures). If anybody has a found a better alternative, please notify!
Kind regards Johan*